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Comments (61)

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  lacker
  I have seen two worries recently:1. People will publish so much frontier mathematics, humans won't be able to understand it all2. Frontier mathematics will all be kept secretFortunately, these seem like they can't both happen at once.
• ZYbCRq22HbJ2y7
  you don't worry about it for a couple years and check back to see if its a real problem or a panic induced engagement generator
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  Ancalagon
  anyone else already experiencing this in a corporate environment? I know I am. Its not just between teams either, its within them.
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  roosterIllusi0n
  Universities should be providing university hosted llms to their faculty and students. No student or faculty member should be using public llms for their work. They can share info directly with other people or in non-public forums to keep it away from commercial llms. It is going to have to be against the rules to submit anyone else's work to a commercial llm. Businesses are going to have similar policies.Universities can host the llms just like they hosted any other computer lab or web service on campus. This is what universities are supposed to be doing. Universities should be involved in open model research and should offer models that are not datamined.
• optimiz3
  Similar principle applies to open source or any other creative endeavor put in the public domain.
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  xenadu02
  We don't.Prior to LLMs there was some minimal effort required to snipe someone and possibly your reputation was attached otherwise there would have been no point in publishing to begin with.Now anyone with a few dollars can do it, many who don't have a reputation to worry about.It's the same problem as YouTube AI slop, AI-generated music, and everything else. Don't you dare tweet or blog about a video idea or hum a few bars from a song - within an hour 27 people will have posted AI slop rip-offs. There's something uniquely depressing about being beaten to the punch by a thief that doesn't deliver the same soul-crushing impact as having someone copy you after the fact.
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  vouaobrasil
  The problem here is that AI isn't just a problem, it also revealed a problem: too much emphasis on publishing papers and churning out new results. The name of the game right now is just that: make something new and significant. AI itelf is a problem around the world right now because we've set up some seriously bad incentives. Same with art - it devolved into content creation for money, so AI snaps that up.What we need to do is make mathematics about understanding, rather than churning out results. People should be rewarded for reaching an ability to explain mathematics without the aid of computers, to teach people for the sake of their learning.I do think AI also needs to be eradicated because of its destructive properties, but I think that at the same time it also is a manifestation of the sickness in our society to go after the wrong incentives that are detrimental in the long run.
• sandworm101
  This is a simple matter of intellectual property. A tool or technique for doing a thing can be patented. A legal monopoly is granted to the originator. The public is made aware of the technique but is legally forbidden from using it for a period of years/decades.
• perching_aix
  I'd guess universities might starting hosting open source models. They can probably actually afford to, unlike individual mathematicians.Though maybe if there's a flurry of math-optimized agents coming up, like there are small coding agents, those might be feasible to host personally.
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  Arubis
  Like we can prevent the rest of our society from devolving into the Medieval Era of secrecy: by treating individuals with respect and dignity and not as the ore from which resources can be profitably extracted.
• charcircuit
  There is a financial incentive to selling access to the leading LLMs needed to find whatever secret result there is out there. See the play station hypervisor 0day from the other day. If a LLM can find someone's secret 0day they are flaunting around they can find a math proof someone else says they have.
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  deadbabe
  I welcome the era of secrecy. After living so much in this era of open information where everyone seems to know everything, secrets may be a way to make things more interesting again.
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  ndriscoll
  Simple: if you don't publish your work, we don't fund you. Why is this even a question?
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  cyanydeez
  wouldn't it be dystopian secrecy cause a flock camera is equally capable of watching the mathematicians as it is the public citizens.
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  rramadass
  > Regardless of the true cost, it seems that professional mathematicians now need to wary about what they put into a LLM and think hard about how to disclose and publish a result.This is all but guaranteed now.Mathematicians/Scientists/Researchers need to stop sharing freely with "AI Companies" and have explicit clauses in place in their publications about not using their research without their explicit consent.There should be a clear legal distinction between using research data for AI model-training vs. another researcher using it.Come up with a legal framework, establish procedures for sharing and using others work and have a single scientific body in charge of enforcing it.
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  mmooss
  Stop treating AI companies and their software as somehow unconstrained, above-the-law actors. It's delusional that anyone buys that. Regulate them appropriately.At the same time, mathematicians should be using sophisticated, specialized LLM tools in much more sophisticated ways than lay people. There should be no way lay people can compete. There are new tools to master and if you use your slide rule, you won't keep up. It's a chance for mathematics productivity to boom.
• kelvo_ran
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• aaron695
  [dead]